From sedentary behaviors to sedentary moments: what constitutes and shapes children's activities and performances at home

Abstract

The study of children’s sedentary behavior has grown exponentially in the last few decades due to the associations between sedentary behavior and various negative health outcomes and to concerns about children’s increasing time spent using screen devices. Most research on sedentary behavior is found in the public health and medical literatures, whereas the social science perspective is currently limited. While social science disciplines have spoken at length about children’s declining spontaneous play outdoors and their increasingly domesticated lives, they could engage much more with what this domestication has meant for children’s lives at home. This thesis takes its point of departure in our lack of knowledge of children’s everyday lives at home, to explore how children’s sedentary behaviors at home are constituted and shaped. It is based on mixed-methods research with children aged 6–12 years in the Gothenburg Region in Sweden. It combines quantitative and qualitative methods to explore what kinds of sedentary behaviors children engage in at home, how these behaviors are connected to their lives outside the home, and how these behaviors are performed. In line with mixed-methods research, this thesis embraces ontological pluralism, using two very different theoretical frameworks—the socio-ecological model of health behavior, and practice theory—to study children’s sedentary behaviors. The findings reveal that children performed a variety of activities at home, many of them not sedentary and not using screen devices. These activities were also deeply entangled in the children’s lives outside the home—notably involving school, participation in organized activities, and neighborhood friendships. Crucially, many of their presumed sedentary activities were not entirely sedentary, but consisted of sedentary moments that were spatiotemporally unique, dynamic, and performed. These findings urge us to think beyond ideas of sedentary behavior as a specific form of individually motivated behavior, and instead highlight the need to think about sedentary moments performed within children’s diverse practices at home.